>> thank you, john. in nevada school districts recently laid off seven teachers a year. some of the best teachers for classroom. in michigan, school districts are spending over a quarter of their budget on retirement benefits. and in wisconsin, property taxes went up every year for the past decade. why? the answer can be summed up in two words, government unions. unions use their power to press government to put their interests first. in contract negotiations unions always insist on seniority-based layouts and this gives guaranteed job security to senior members. but it also means the school districts are forced to lay off the new hires first even if those teachers are star performers. parents object but the unions have decided they can accept that. the unions also want understandably bear generation

retirement benefits for their members. in michigan 27% of school districts budgets provide pensions and health benefits and it's not hard to see what. is a state can retire after 25 years on the job and collect full benefits i have a lot of teachers retire in their late 40s or early 50's. but if you care about getting dollar spent on the classroom that is a bit of a problem in the state facing a tremendous budget crunch like michigan is but when the legislature propose raising the minimum retirement age not to 65 social security h.b. 260 the michigan education association used their political clout to kill the bill. if costs were going to be cut by one of those cuts to go elsewhere. they wanted taxes to go up. that is what it's been happening in wisconsin. in wisconsin school districts districts and municipality simply didn't have the power to roll back some of those union benefits so they only solution to keep a service is going was higher taxes. unions were fine with that it

wasn't until scott walker reforms which they protested vehemently and the school districts and municipality's gave the ability to get control of their budgets to bring cost and that is when we saw property taxes fall. government exists to serve the people. protecting the public in giving children get education not be good for cutting into it to families take him pay. the common good has to take tired or over the interest of any narrow group. government unions make this impossible. think about what collective pardoning powers do. means the governments, the people rather their elected representatives have to sit down with government unions and bargain with them as equals over how do we spend taxes, how is the government going to be operated? unless the government unions agree the public policy can't be enacted so if you have school district selected overwhelmingly on a platform of ending tenure and evaluating teachers on the

basis of performance and giving promotion to the best teachers in removing ineffective teachers from the classrooms at school board is not that the power in our democracy to enact that platform. they have to sit down with the unions in the unions say no and that is that. the school board doesn't have the power for these reforms. that is undemocratic and that is something the union movement in itself once recognize. a half-century ago in 1959 afl-cio executive council stated and i'm quoting directly, in terms of accepting collective bargaining procedures government workers have no right beyond the authorities of congress but since then the union movement has changed its mind. most states have now given them collective bargaining powers in government and the results would be disastrous. that is why i'm delighted to welcome "hemingway's boat" to the heritage foundation to speak about this new book,

"shadowbosses." this book reveals her government unions have twisted government from serving the public good into serving their own interests and mallory factor has the expertise to write this book hercules the junk u.s. professor of international politics and american government at the citadel and a member of the council on foreign relations whose frequently testified before congress on financial regulations and other economic issues. mallory is the senior editor of politics -- written widely on economic issues for publications including "the wall street journal" forbes magazine and many national newspapers. previously he served as chairman of the free enterprise fund a free market that advocates economic growth lower taxes and limited government and the same institution brought the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of sarbanes-oxley all the way to the supreme court. mallory is also seeing -- senior fellow from 2007 through 2011 and share the economic

roundtable with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in 2009. please join me in welcoming mallory factor to the heritage foundation. [applause] >> thank you so much. this is thrilling. what an honor to be here. there are so many people to thank that helped with this book but before he do that i want to thank heritage. the heritage people have been outstanding and i am just honored to have their leader, president and mr. heritage at fuller over there. thank you for being here today and thank you for having me here today. also john hilboldt set this up. what a delight to do this because of john hilboldt but i am also intimidated to have james sherk here. a number of things in this book are in there because of james. we quote him extensively in the work he does is truly important for america. i'm going to take a couple more

seconds to thank a publisher who is in the audience, kate hartson and a couple of other people who have been so important to this book and one in particular don who is sitting over there who has been an absolute godsend in terms of the amount of help and work he has put into it. this book is all their book as well as our book. i want to share with you a little bit about why a wrote this book. i started working on this project with my wife about a year ago. for years i have written and spoken about the growing national debt and we investigated why government has grown beyond its means. i have been sounding the alarm for years and spent a lot of time looking at the root causes of the excess of spending. what i discovered is that shadowbosses are setting the agenda. they are setting the agenda of congress in setting the agenda

in our statehouses. they are setting the agenda in our city councils and their school boards as james put it before. is really better government spending too much on government employees hiring too many and paying them too much. this is how i got to the subject of government employee unions provide again exploring how these government employee unions lobby our government to increase spending on government employees which by the way increases their dues income and gives them more money to spend on politics. it is the cycle, this corrupt cycle of political spending, which benefits government employee unions far more than it benefits the government employees and it drives our nation into debt. and that is why i explored this topic and that is how this book came about. coming into this room, somebody

said what is a shadowboss? i will take two minutes to explain that to you. and what does a shadowboss have to do with government employee unions? in our lives, our shadowbosses are the people that we really work for, the people who hold us accountable for the decisions that we make in our lives. it's our fathers telling us to study harder so we will have a chance the chance for a bright future. it's our mothers pressing us to stay out of trouble. it's our football coaches sending in place from the sidelines. for many of us god is our shadowboss giving us a plan for action we ought to take and the consequences if we don't. unfortunately as i found writing this book, for many of our political leaders, their shadowbosses are the government employee union bosses. these bosses tell them what to

do, which legislation to support and when to bend to the demands of the unions and contract negotiations. the shadowbosses are at their two pat politicians on the back, and to tear them down when they don't do things in their interest. it is shocking to me but not to people like james shirt over here, that over 20 million people work for government and 41% of those people are represented a union. government workers are five times as unionized as private employees. only 7.6% of private-sector workers are represented by a union and far less than that are actually union members. but the rate of unionization interestingly enough very spy state and by profession.

in 20 states, less than 20% of government employee unions are members but in 15 states more than 50% are union members. now, do art these union members? they are teachers, they are firemen, police and postal workers and by the way they are the most unionized government unions represent almost every type of government worker including federal border patrol agents, civilian employees of the military, office workers and state and local government, university professors, graduate student assistants and even zookeepers. government is the growth area in unions compared with the private sector of course and just to give you some kind of an idea and this is the number that mr. sherk developed here at

heritage. there are over 200,000 private-sector union workers in the auto industry and about 219,000 in just the post office there are 477,000 union members, almost 2.5 times the entire auto industry in just the post office. what does this really mean for our nation? many americans feel we have lost control of our government and politicians no longer answer to the american people and there's a good reason that they feel this way. government employee unions have a huge influence over our political system and they are driving big government spending and over regulation of our economy. in the little time we have remaining because i want to open it for questions and answers, i'm going to get the seven of the policy concerns we have raised in "shadowbosses" about unionism.

underscore and to hit on seven of them. number one union strive excessive spending on government employees. i don't know if you realize this but the private sector unions have to make sure that their demands are not so great that the private employer goes out of business, right? well, outrageous concessions to unions don't try the government out of business. and they don't make union members lose their jobs. the government will always be in business. unwieldy union contracts just make government immensely bigger, more expensive, create debt and bankrupt our city and state and ultimately our federal government. and they are more burdensome on taxpayers. two, unions are private organizations, and we give them special benefits and treatment from our government. it is important to realize that

they are private organizations. they are not there for the public good. government employee unions get their business directly from our government that they are not part of our government themselves. unions represent government employees because it's their business to represent them, not because they are working for the public good. the problem is that our government elevates one private group, government employee unions out of proportion to anyone else, taxpayers, citizens and even union members. we all know and we all believe strongly in our right to speak under the first amendment. do you agree with me? but you don't have a right to be listened to. and less york government employee union. when you petition the government for example you have a right to talk with the government does not have a right to listen to you, does not have the right to

listen to you. there's a group that does have that right. with collective bargaining public officials are forced to bargain with the union. they can't just ignore their demands and walk away. they don't have to bargain with taxpayers and they don't have to bargain with any other route but they have to bargain with the unions. we must never forget that unions are businesses that are run for the benefit of their members and union bosses not american workers, is who they run it for. our nation is in deep trouble because of this. and government unions even get subsidies from taxpayers. the american taxpayer unwittingly is paying government workers for huge amounts of time to do government work while they do the union work.

in shadowbosses, we put the numbers together and according to official government reports, federal employees spend over 3 million hours, 2010 statistics on official time which means they're getting paid to work for the government that they are doing union work instead. that cost the taxpayers at least $137 million in salary benefits but when you put this date, local and county, you are looking at 23 million man-hours a year at a cost of over $1 billion. that is a direct subsidy and we are not including the other subsidies like giving them office space, giving them copiers, letting them use telephones as well as a number of other items that we subsidize them with. in his time this time when we are cutting back teachers, and waned we are cutting back high unemployment why are we spending

a billion dollars a year just to subsidize these union to take in multiple billion dollars a year? interesting fact we found, most of you know that tsa was recently unionized. before tsa was unionized we founder of pork. homeland security alone before tsa had 62 members of homeland security full-time working on union business dedicated to do homeland security work. right from their own notes. that is just shocking. now the reason i'm not revealing other agencies numbers is because they don't reveal them. they don't talk about how many employers. nationwide, that 23 million

man-hours is just staggering and i am being redundant because it's mind-boggling at this time in our society that we do this. it's called official time and it is part of the u.s. code and by the way for those of you who want to know it's five u.s., 3170 on a federal basis. number four, unions corrupt our political process. government unions are not just encrypting our country. there are also compromising our free elections. government unions use bought and paid for politicians to pack legislation granting them unending benefits. government employee unions like to say they get to end of quote them, elect their own bosses. they actually put into power people who will make all the decisions about their salaries, benefits, work worlds and they

have laws and regulations that govern themselves. and if these politicians don't perform guess what? they throw them out and put their money behind somebody else. these unions will do anything in their power to elect politicians who will serve their interests. they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars, even billions of their members dues on politics. they will send an political and political ground troops which they will include paid volunteers to get out the vote. they will form alliances and donate to leftist organizations who will support a pro-union agenda or go money flows my friends from government employee unions to politicians back to the same unions in a never-ending cycle of greed and corruption. politicians know that union money will cycle back to them in

return for their pro-union votes and if they cross those unions, the unions will throw them right out of office. unions reward their friends and punish their enemies very effectively. and the amount of money they can bring to bear as neighboring. the unions today collect over $14 billion in dues. just the teachers unions alone as we talk about shadowboxes, spent $2 billion a year just in dues and again we lay out all these figures in great detail. interestingly enough a lot of their own filings these unions spend about 20% of their dues income on political activities which is very close to the percentage they spend on representing their members but that other 60% on administrative

overhead and some of those other issues i think if we looked into it carefully we would see a lot of it is also spin on various forms of political at to the. five, government unions are bankrupting our state. states with the longest and strongest history of government employee unions are also the states with the worst budget crises. government employee unions are a major country rating factor, perhaps the major contributing factor to our state and local budgetary crises. they are bankrupting our states with outrageous salaries and outrageous overtime and outrageous pensions for government employees and they are crowding out other spending at state and local budgets. other spending which we may disagree on but liberals are and

progressives should be agreeing with us that they are being crowded out. of the programs they want as well. interestingly enough the 10 states with the highest debt per capita in 2010, all of them are heavily unionized and none of them, none of them are right to work states. taxpayers are fleeing unionized states for the greener and freer pastures of the less unionized states. america is becoming too distinct nations, unionized nations in the free nations. six my friends, government unions promote -- while i was working on "shadowbosses" i was able to propose -- prove what i suspected that union select politician from the offices but they not only get kohl union

votes, they also get reliable leftist vote on a whole host of issues. our research has shown that the most labor supported members of congress have an abysmal voting record on all types of votes that matter to there've members and conservatives. they vote against business and they vote against family values. they vote against life. they vote against the 2nd amendment. i have a chart that i could share with you if you are and just again it will be up on www.shadowbosses.com showing the politicians and the money spent or go interestingly enough, their members don't agree with the way these union bosses spend money on these issues. the members are not even knowledgeable about it and in many cases it's hidden from them. this immense spending by government employee unions on

these politics matters to every single one of us but it also matters to their members and the members to not get to see it. and employee unions give millions in charitable donations to other leftist organizations. the goal is to build alliances with left-minded political groups of these groups will support the unions on these issues. it's a very effective technique for them to hold together the best message. and finally, what is the next frontier for unions? government union no question it's enlarging the private sector in its number of members but now out-of-control budgets are causing our government to contract, unions are looking for new frontiers. unions have been working to organize new groups of workers who are not employees of the

government or any company who receives subsidies from government. in "shadowbosses" we detail how and 10 states government employee unions have already forced home care workers including parents who care for their disabled children and people who care for aging parents, they force them into unions and forcibly take dues out. what is the next step? my friends, the next step is to expand and disorganized the model. disability recipients, veterans, other groups that receive government-funded benefits such as social security recipients. already unions like the american federation of state and county municipal afscme as they are known promote retirement unions. they do this already and what

they will do is they will lobby government for social security and medicare. one trend is that the unions are turning from organizations that represent their members and contracting company gushy shins and to and grievances into lobbying organizations. and as our nanny state which heritage helps fight against so well becomes more commonplace, it will be easier for government to force groups of americans to accept for slobbing on their behalf, just like a force american workers to accept forest representation now. think about it my friends. the 20.5 billion government employees, these unions are already representing 41% but there are tens of millions of americans who receive some form

of benefit or entitlement from government who can also be unionized with the few tweets of the law. imagine how much more income could be generated by representing them. i don't know if you all realize this but for every million worker there is about it really in dollars for shadowbosses. every million worker, there is a billion-dollar in dues to support political activities and help leftist organizations. for the past half-century, government employee unions have been winning. the union power of privilege has been ratcheted up, never down and it has been ratcheted up towards greater union power. it is our job to reverse that pattern and restore sanity and

fiscal policy to our country. i thank you for being here today and listening to me and i thank you for hearing about "shadowbosses." it's been a two year work for us and i hope it will help people understand government employee unions better. [applause] seamount reg before going to questions from the crowd i have one question. these unions reportedly worked government employees. what fraction actually voted for this union? >> in some states under a couple of%, across-the-board less than 10%. a lot of people get a job in the next thing they know, they have to be a member of the union to pay dues to keep that job. they have never had the opportunity. less than 10% of union members

have voted for a union and when they have that opportunity like the teachers did in constant, half of them drop out almost immediately. yes, sir? >> hi. my name is lex and i'm unaffiliated. enjoyed your talk very much and agree wholeheartedly. in the course of talking you never once mentioned the d word, democrat. it should not be surprising that unions pursue their self-interest and feather their own nests but they have complicit politicians and elected officials who will work with them and they are predominately democrat. >> well, i go a step further. a lot of people say the democratic party has a subsidiary to -- subsidiary.

i believe government employee unions have a subsidiary called the democratic party. if you look at that chart i was talking about if you go to shadowbosses.com and you look at the chart you will see the top 10 house and senate candidates. they are all democrats. next question. yes, sir? >> larry hartley. this couldn't be more timely and it will have quite an impact on what we will be doing in the next few months on this session. let me ask you this and the issue of the party, on the federal level which is absolutely accurate my experience at the state level getting into this now with their state and legislature in springfield illinois for example where a lot of the success of unions in illinois is -- is much

to the democratic party of the republican party but nevertheless, we see a wide variety of states and the way states handle this and you go into it in the book. where the successes and failures have been. >> thank you so much for that question and by the way great job of the agency. i really appreciate what you do. we all think that there are 23 write to work states, one of those being indiana. they are but what is a right-to-work state lags that you're free to petition government and free to fill your own labor? no. there were only seven states that you are not forced under collective hardening and there were 23 states where you don't have to pay that the differential in terms of membership between the seven states and the other 16 states

that are right to work states but you can be forced under collective bargaining is 60% more union members per taxpayer so it's not just a matter of right to work. it's a matter of being forced into collective bargaining which means you don't have the right to petition your employers and you don't have the right to sell your own labor. there are only seven states where you have that right. thanks for the question. next question. yes, maam? >> people who opposed obamacare were focused on the constitutionality or the cost to employers and small businesses. i thought it was really interesting the relationship between unions and promoting obamacare. can you describe what that will mean? >> right now there are about --

thanks for the question. there are about 1.5 million members in the health care sector. there are about 17 million roughly workers in health care. under obamacare it will go up to 21 million so on a percentage basis, you will have a lot more union members but with government giving money, there will be various ways that they will be able to unionize. a good analogy is that in canada now, they have socialized medicine. you have 60% unionization of health care. you will see huge quantities of people being unionize under

obamacare and that his wife it has nothing to do with them getting a -- on the cadillac plans. that was a smokescreen. they supported it because they know they will get a lot more members because of that and they are going to get a billion dollars in dues for every million member and 20 million approximately potential new members. you do the math. the numbers are just staggering. next question. yes, sir. >> can you talk a little bit about the pr, selling this problem to the public when unions and politicians have been so good about -- are teachers and policemen and firefighters? can you please talk about that? >> that is a great question. for everything you say about education, you are against children. we went to over the past few

decades from 18 to juan teacher -- student to teacher ratio down to the eight to one. what the problem is is that the teachers unions won't allow us to get rid of the bad teachers and the best example of this is in new jersey and in nevada teachers of the year were fired. teachers of the year were fired. why were they fired? because they were new teachers doing a great job and the union rules said they are the ones to go. the bad teachers you cannot get rid of. the teachers who are not doing a good job you cannot get rid of. you can get rid of the bottom 10%. you can make our education system, our k-12 education system much more effective. also why she would be the going to school 172180 days year when

many other countries are doing 220 and more hours per day? why can't you do if? teachers unions won't let you. why can't you get good math teachers because you pay the same for physics and a math teacher and that skill set is much more needed in the private sector to pay for a physical lead or english teacher. in our private sector their skill set is not in demand but you cannot pay more because the union rolls won't allow you to. you can't award teachers with bonuses because the allow you to. if you have an art teacher she gets more money for being a -- teacher. these are all union rules. these were not established for children and not even established for the best of the members. i love this quote from albert.

it really tells you and gives you a feel for what this is all about. when schoolchildren start paying dues that is when we will represent them. yes, sir. >> david with the heritage foundation. we are trying to think through how we can and do this. can you give us maybe a crash history of how we got to this point and the changes that were made in labor laws in order to allow government employees to be unionize? >> starting with the executive order, goes way back but the big change in the executive order. i i will give you a crash course and it's real simple. real simple to change it. number one, you don't force

workers to pay dues to keep a job. period. worker should not have to pay dues to keep a job because he can join a union if if he wants to but he doesn't have to. he does not have to pay dues to keep a job and number two, we should stop subsidizing government employee unions. very simple and we should change the law to do it and i have been told by some of the people a lot smarter than we are that are involved in this movement and have for a long time there will be legislation coming from the house and senate to say hey unions if you want to have people working full-time you are taking in $14 billion a year. pay them. don't ask us to pay for them and to amass the taxpayer to pay the union work. three, dues check off. it basically means taking out money from your paycheck like

you do withholding taxes. we have got to stop doing that. the government should not be taking out money from people's paychecks automatic he. four, people should have the right to be represented by a kenyan or not be represented by a union. in 43 states, that right does not exist. people should have the right to sell their labor and people should have the right to petition their employer. 43 states don't give us that right and lastly millions and millions of government workers had never voted for a union should have the right to vote and i think union facts has been advocating a bill to that effect and working hard to get that changed. every union member has the right to vote having a union or vote

against having a union on a seat -- in a secret ballot. those are five quick ideas on how to change things. just giving workers and union members more freedom. that is what it's about, freedom. the next question if i may. oh, i'm sorry. i didn't see you, sir. i apologize. >> i am from italy where i am a professor. listening to your speech i was telling myself, oh you are so lucky because the situation we have in italy.

>> we are getting there, don't worry. we are getting there. >> the italian businessman -- [inaudible] the boss of the theater -- sorry. >> it's one of the union bosses telling you not to ask the question. [laughter] >> we are surprised by this u.s. trade and the union and what it is doing with chrysler but it has a lot of problems in italy. it is not allowed to be -- [inaudible] if you look at the italian experience it's almost impossible to eliminate.

government will give you the privilege of the trade union but more or less i heard similar things in your speech so my question is, in case the republicans will win the race to the white house, do you think that they could somehow change the situation that you have described in your speech? >> i hope so. i hope so. that candidates are very good, the republicans candidates are very good conservatives and they believe in freedom and values. i have not seen an enough about them in terms of their belief in the union issues and the government employee unions and by the way keep in mind in

looking at less than 7% of the workers that are in government employee unions you are looking at a small amount of people when you look at the total united states but the amount of power and the amount of influence that they project into politics is just astounding and they do it all from behind closed doors. we go into that in great detail and "shadowbosses" where we have the information from the freedom of information act about the secret meetings that went on. the other thing about these union heads the most people don't realize is they are truly the 1%. unions talk about the 1% and about occupy wall street but these guys are making huge amounts of money. i mean huge amounts. afscme secretary-treasurer makes -- many employees make well over 200,000. it is just astounding. they are truly the 1%, spending

hundreds of thousands of dollars on private planes, ready access to the white house, being invited to all the best events of the white house. i mean, these are not little guys that have worked their way up. these are truly the 1% that they talk to their members about. [inaudible] >> the boilermakers union which is her, if they just use their logo on an article as i did, some people in the law firm which raised a strong coincidence and occupies the same business address in kansas city kansas and i was writing basically a summary of the "kansas city star" long piece on how these guys live the life of

luxury spending, receiving 400, $500,000 a year in salary or retirement benefits. each one of these executives. they have very powerful lawyers and they know how to intimidate and it's true in the public sector too. maybe you can -- i don't want to assume anything. >> new you know of any cases where law firms of the public sector unions intimidate people for any reason in any context? >> i don't off the top of my head that there are many cases that have been brought. i am not a lawyer. my co-author, my wife is a lawyer and just if she were standing next to me she would be able to rattle them off but there are a number of them. just drop us a note on www.shadowboxes.com and we will get back to you. next, yes maam?

>> i will to thank you for mentioning us and the book being -- >> you guys do a great job. we mention you because you deserve it. >> well thank you very much. i was wondering if if you could speak on -- we were touching on some of these outlandish salaries and a lot of the teachers, randi weingarten president of the two largest speakers unions make you $500,000 a year. that does not affect me but the transparency, how much do you think the member how important it is to get that type of information out because it's really the member that is getting the raw deal and a lot of work to ensure that the benefits -- i would venture to say that the rank-and-file knew what was

going on it would play a huge component. >> you are absolutely right and thank you for the question. the president makes $400,000 a year. ..

>> then you cannot add any say whatsoever. you have to pay and it still not have the say. i agree. could you discuss the role of pensions?

>> i know you could discuss that question far better than i could. i am at the podium. [laughter] you have done a great job putting numbers together. the figures are not at the top of my tongue but it is a group doing our cities and states. this scam that goes on for the last three years with huge amounts of overtime we cannot afford to do that. they are based gripping our country. i don't know the numbers off the top of my head like you do. [laughter] that is a problem with the state's and local governments. no question. >> the industrial unions

traditionally controllecontrolle d tort infiltrated by organized crime. teamsters, longshoreman, ope rating engineers is there any evidence organized crime is involved? >> they have become very legitimate. mini union heads are the i the leaks of egos. the famous lawyer went on to become the recess appointee he was not going to law school at night. very highly trained people that are not traditional union members. the american federation of

teachers leader has a strong academic background but teaching is of minor part of it professionals running organizations they would be in the top quartile. talk about huge massive organizations. i don't see the influence of organized crime. if there is any, i cannot go into detail but the traditional unions are now going to government employees because that is the growth area.

82 represent government employees. >> one marquest and. >> congratulations on your new appointment. >> are you optimistic it clore positive with the debates that as played out over the course of the last year? >> we all look at wisconsin. we one. it is over. but what happened in ohio? do any of you realize in wisconsin, firefighters, pol icemen were excluded? he was afraid to do battle with them. the power that the unions

hold and the massive amount of money they control is mind-boggling. this battle for freedom in america is far from over. shadow bosses to not want to lose their power and way of life. they want to be the 1%. thank you so much. it has been fabulous. [applause] joining us live is steven carter, and he is the author among many other most ofs we have the author the." impeachment of abraham lincoln, a novel. get thereto premises that are

historically inaccurate. abraham lincoln survives thepean assassination attempt and he is impeached. where do come up with this? >> i make it clear that i am a fan. it is not an argument for the impeachment but it is a novel.tion interested in presidentialf linn power the question suggest politica itself what with his political enemies that were looking for a way to get out of the way what if it is through the impeachment process? did >> when did it occur to youg to? this might be a fun thing to

do? >> i remember in college rrect? following might professors t asking what would happen if. c i had to pursue it selected the court -- courtroom drama is heonomies the?to t >> it is not easy to write but it did fit into my interest per car ride about an the presidential power. taking those questions and ideas, we din did suspend the writ of habeas corpus

and those who were criticalhow of the war for the court martial so my notion was to be used for political reasons but from what he dead -- did for the war to get him out of the way. >> historic reactor at how much political pressure was the under early 1865? >> at the time he had to own balance the competing run factions of his own party running the civil war to maintain his own presidencye, the men were better morally to d to hold the job but

lincoln's political foes are le trying to figure out to reduce the power to take charge of the administration they view linkdin as a man. >> one more thing to get out to who is his attorney? [laughter] >> almost all novels are told from the point* of thevi i powe insider someone of power. a my protagonist is a young black woman who was a 21 year-old recent college lawyerte. the ones to be a voyeur. there may be six or seven in america. overl, no female. job per ambition is to be aclerk a lawyer she ends up as a minor clerk and end up defending lincoln in theomeone w novel to look at him in

someone who was black and trying hard to get in the corridors of power. >> historical eight accurate six are seven black lawyers? >> we don't know the exact number. no members of the bar until was late 1870's some didf duties but at the time there was not that much money to be made.were bla there were black people small numbers rising one of 18 the most admired60 professionsws was to be a pharmacist that was much more lucrative andl. there were a handful as ha well. >> host: how many books y have you written? >> i have published a torrid

nine nonfiction this is my t fifth novel i like great king. >> you teaching this semester? >> still a full-time law professor. since the novel people of asked me i think what professor is my job but write-in novels is a hobby. >> when you wrote your first? storie what got you over the first?s ll a >> characters have always i floated even today when i write a novel i alloys haveike t characters in mind some new and situat up in this study becauseio they are mysteries

and they are put into an odd situation. >> host: we will not give away the ending but given the title it is safe to say he was impeached by the house of representatives. >> correct. of house impeaches the t senate hold the trial this se second half is a courtroomat thriller based on but it may have looked like. i righted as a fan. not as a foe. >> the impeachment of abraham lincoln. book. here is the book.joining u here you can buy it yourself. >> this is my pleasure